This document provides guidelines for WordPress SEO themes. It lists both dos and don'ts. The key recommendations include: using the site name first in title tags, adding taxonomy descriptions, showing excerpts on archives, allowing breadcrumbs, using post titles as anchor text, and keeping theme code clean and optimized for search engines. Specific guidelines are provided around heading structure, meta tags, hiding links, and content placement. Overall the focus is on optimizing themes to be search engine friendly and user-centric.

1. SEO Wordpress Themes
Do’s and Don'ts

2. WordPress SEO Theme Don'ts
• Put the site's name first in the title tag
• Add a static meta description to pages.
• Don't add static robots meta tags or anything
else that'll hamper search engines.
• Use the H1 for the logo, on every page.
• Don't hide links in the theme.
• Have sidebars above the content in your
code.

3. Put the site's name first in the title
tag
The title tag should be post title - site title or a
variation on that, but the only variation you
do not want in a WordPress SEO Theme is the
exact opposite: site title - post title.

4. Add a static meta description to
pages.
• I see this so often now: people complain that
my WP SEO plugin doesn't work because the
meta description isn't showing, but in
fact, their theme contains a static meta
description that is the same on each bloody
page.

5. Don't add static robots meta tags or
anything else that'll hamper search
engines.
• please don't add meta robots tags,
"index,follow" is what Google will do by
default and if you include it in your theme
statically, a user cannot use a plugin to make a
page un-indexable, for instance.

6. Use the H1 for the logo, on every
page.
• The H1 should be used for the most important heading
on the page. In most cases, that is the article
title, not the logo, on every page but the homepage.
• [h1] The heading structure for your blog
– [h2] 5 basic principles about headings
– [h2] The headings for your homepage
• [h3] The issue of full posts on archive pages
– [h2] Heading structure for your single posts / single pages
– [h2] Structure of headings for your category / tag /
taxonomy pages
– [h2] Headings and HTML5
– [h2] Conclusion: re-think your blog's headers

7. Heading structure for your homepage
• H1: Blog's name
• H2: Your blog's tagline, if it's "keyword-rich"; if
not, all your recent posts should have an H2.
• H3: Your recent posts, or, if those have an
H2, this could be used for somewhat older
posts.
• H4: related content in the sidebar, like the
heading of an "about" widget.
• H5: Unrelated headings in your
sidebar, footer, etc.

8. Heading structure for posts/pages
• H1: post / page title
• H2's and H3's: subheadings and sub-
subheadings
• H4: your blog's name, and possibly related
widgets
• H5: same as above: sidebars etc.

9. Don't hide links in the theme.
• Don't hide any links in your theme that don't
belong there. One link to you as the theme
creator: ok, anything else: nonsense.

10. Have sidebars above the content in
your code.
• In an ideal world, the first content in the
HTML is the content of the page, followed by
related navigation, then sidebars, then site
navigation, then utilities like sitemaps and
privacy statements. Having sidebars above the
main content of a page though is a straight
violation of the WordPress SEO Theme
guidelines.

11. WordPress SEO Theme Do's
• Allow taxonomy descriptions to be shown.
• Show excerpts on archives.
• Allow for breadcrumbs.
• Use the post title as the first anchor text.
• Clean, cleaner, cleanest.

12. Allow taxonomy descriptions to be
shown.
• In most themes, taxonomy archives are boring
as hell. They have no unique content
whatsoever and just contain the latest posts
for that taxonomy. WordPress has a core
feature that allows for a description of a
taxonomy though, and a good WordPress SEO
Theme should allow the user to display that
description, topped by an H1 with the
Taxonomy title in it.

13. Show excerpts on archives.
• Archive pages with full-length posts are not
really any good for SEO, doing so on your
frontpage for the last few posts might have
some usability benefit, allowing users who
come to your homepage to read posts
immediately, for archives that benefit doesn't
outweigh the SEO.

14. Allow for breadcrumbs.
• Most any SEO these days will tell you
breadcrumbs are a nice and easy way to
create a good internal linking structure
(provided the user uses the taxonomies etc.
right of course) so embedding breadcrumbs is
important. Making sure they work with
custom taxonomies is important too!

15. Use the post title as the first anchor
text.
• Don't use "read more" or "continue reading"
as the first anchor text towards a post, not in
the body, not in widgets, nowhere. Just use
the post title.

16. Clean, cleaner, cleanest.
• Your theme code should be as clean as
humanly possible, don't overdo it on divs etc.
for styling, just keep it simple and solid, to
allow for fast page loads and easy crawling.